Conquering the Corporate Ritual of the 1:1
Updated: 3 days ago
Dear Readers,
The Manager 1:1 is a time-honored corporate tradition that when done well shapes your career for the better. When ignored or avoided, it’s a missed opportunity or distorted reality.
Before we start, I must confess that I have a bit of beef with Manager 1:1s.
Somewhere along the way the ritual became synonymous with rut. It devolves into idle chatter as two people each hold a hidden agenda they never discuss, leaving everything unsaid.
It’s in desperate need of a revamp, rebrand, re-creation. Lest, it become the gravestone of management.
Skip Ahead or Read It All
Let’s first examine the rise and fall of the 1:1.
The concept of recurring manager to individual check-ins came into the zeitgeist in the early 1980s via High Output Management, a book by Andy Grove, the one-time Intel CEO.
It took off in the late 2000s and 2010s mostly due to the Silicon Valley tech boom and popularization of management philosophies like psychological safety > task delegation. The book Radical Candor was the cherry on top.
It had a lot of good intent, but if we fast forward to today, CEOs and Founders alike consider it a hot take to say they don’t do 1:1s.
So, how did this practice burn hot and fade into oblivion? And how did we go from nurturing high output to a lazy, automated calendar invite?
What’s been lost along the way is that 1:1s need to be adaptable, and the nail in the coffin is the popularized belief that an individual should own the 1:1.
Why do 1:1s feel like a waste of time?
The 1:1 represents a corporate paradox. It’s a tool designed for open communication that’s become a bureaucratic shield for leaders to avoid the discomforts of hard conversations.
We’re in a rut.
The weekly cadence means there’s no scarcity. Each 1:1 just morphs into the next, so it’s easy to avoid or punt hard convos to the next week.
Without direction, purpose, or intent, the critical convos don’t happen. It’s an endless loop of procrastination.
There’s the death of the unsaid.
Without intention, 1:1s can slip into status updates or surface level exchanges. Managers seem busy or unprepared, individuals don’t know how to best use the time, and conversation never gets off the ground.
Or conversation is saved for the 1:1.
Both sides collect and save topics for the scheduled 1:1. By then an issue may be cold, context forgotten, or frustration festering to resentment. A 5-minute ad hoc huddle could be worth more than 5 1:1s. Timing matters.
We’re in meeting overload.
In data and anecdotes, meeting volume has surged, especially for remote workers. Now 1:1s and check-ins occur more than other meeting types. Often info that everyone should know travels inconsistently via 1:1s instead of team spaces.
It’s a shield for managers.
Recurring 1:1s give the illusion of managing, without the emotional or structural burden. It’s not easy to challenge a manager’s 1:1 effectiveness. So, managers may use the time poorly, make it about them, or cherry pick where to focus.
It’s not treated with reverence.
Busy managers reschedule or cancel 1:1s, which completely nullifies the desired impact of psychological safety. Instead it sends a message that an individual’s growth is a low priority. Leaving individuals feeling undervalued.
Managers abdicate their role.
It’s a popular (but wrong) philosophy that the individual (direct report) should own the 1:1. When the burden at all levels is placed on the individual with the least power, there’s a wild swing in quality and savvy producing lopsided results.
Let’s craft a 1:1 concept that works for individuals.
In the new world, the 1:1 is neither a cozy chat nor sterile formality. It’s a place for friction, awkwardness, and curated support.
I'm going to ask you to deeply reconsider all the 1:1 basics:
How often you meet
I’m a big believer in creating a cadence of intentional conversations that follow the employee journey. The in-between is filled with an open-door policy, so individuals know that they can come to their manager anytime.
Instead of recurring, meet based on themes and milestones like...
The Onboarding Season.
High frequency, high context 1:1s to ensure a new employee can integrate tactically and spiritually into the company. An individual’s success and longevity depend on these early days when friction is high, relationships are new, and there’s a learning curve regardless of experience.
The High-Growth or Promotion Season.
When an individual is stretching their capabilities and navigating new risks, decisions, and even organizational politics—the 1:1 cadence should increase and be heavily focused on feedback loops and coaching.
The Steady-State Season.
When an individual is in a steady state, coaching takes a different form. The 1:1s are less frequent, focused on deep-dives into work + feedback and provoking questions to check-in on alignment. This is how you keep someone engaged and know when to put them into high-growth or course-correction.
The Course-Correction Season.
When performance slips, the 1:1s shift back to an onboarding-esque cadence for structured, close-interval feedback loops to catch gaps.
The Staying-or-Going Season.
When an individual is disconnecting or leaving, managers need to capture concerns and context to either salvage the relationship or improve for the next.
This is an imperfect list, and the structure for each of these isn’t as important as showing up curious and committed.
The most important thing is to tailor communication around the actual needs of the human being in front of you and prioritize responsiveness.
Who owns the 1:1
I’m getting on my soapbox for a moment, because a huge and underrated flaw with 1:1s is managers placing the burden on the individual.
At best, it’s a well-intended attempt at ownership, but at worst, it’s a way to skirt blame or effort. If the individual doesn’t use their 1:1 wisely, it’s on them not the manager.
I’ve seen too many managers use individual ownership as an excuse to not give feedback unless the individual asks for it. This leads to individuals lacking the information to understand their performance and status.
Career agency is not a universal skill. Expecting a junior employee to "own" a meeting with someone who holds complete power over their livelihood, promotion, and psychological safety is structurally absurd.
It forces them to guess what a manager wants to hear, leading to safe, rehearsed, and useless conversations. Instead, managers should match their style to the vulnerability and experience level of the person across the table.
The Junior Tier (Manager-Led).
The manager owns the structure and provides prompts, teaches the individual how to think about their career, and models what a healthy, awkward, but productive feedback loop looks like. This approach nurtures skills like managing upward, surfacing blockers + concerns, and asking for resources.
The Mid-Career Tier (Co-Authored).
The training wheels are off. The individual brings the context and the immediate roadblocks, while the manager holds the line on long-term strategy and career development.
The Executive Tier (Individual-Led).
This is the only place where "the employee owns the 1:1" actually applies. An experienced leader brings the agenda, the data, and the strategic asks, using their executive's time purely as a sounding board and last stop for roadblocks.
What gets shared
The rules of engagement for confidentiality and topics should be set earlier on.
What does good performance look like and how would someone know from 1:1s if they’re not meeting it?
Everyone on your team should know the answer
Set the standard that you’ll bring concerns to your 1:1s, which can save you from high anxiety 1:1s with your best performers and on the other end—surprise terminations.
What’s an individual topic v. a team topic?
The blight of recurring 1:1s is that sometimes scheduling means you see everyone 1:1 more frequently than you gather as a team. Use your discretion to ensure team topics get to your team either in the same meeting or an email for consistency.
What stays private and what will be shared?
An individual should never wonder if what they shared will become gossip fodder or not. If you need to share 1:1 info outside that meeting, be clear before doing so.
How it feels
1:1s are awkward.
There is silence, honesty, openness, encouragement, and reciprocity—the 1:1 is not a one-sided conversation. Managers owe honest conversations to their teams, so it’s not going to be easy breezy. Most importantly the individual feels seen and everyone gets lingering questions, doubts, and concerns off their chest.
For individuals, here's how to tip the 1:1 in your favor.
Even though I firmly believe your manager should own the 1:1, you are ultimately the owner of your career, so let’s make those 1:1s work for you.
There is no perfect 1:1 template. Instead, the 1:1 is a lever in your relationship to build connection, advocate for your work, and understand them better.
Here's how to work around some common woes:
Your manager isn’t bringing up your growth.
It’s hard to know why your manager isn’t addressing your growth without testing the waters. Are they holding on to feedback? Do they not know how to nurture your growth? Do they not see you growing in the company? Or do you just need to be the one to bring it up?
Ask for feedback.
Giving feedback is awkward—Try our Death of Honesty Article for tips on how to pull honest feedback out of your manager. You can also try bringing your own assessment or feedback from others to provoke your manager’s response.
If your manager is particularly bad at feedback…
Push for development.
Request budget for a coach, ask for intros to mentors, or interview them about their own career. Managers often get into their role without training or role models, so they may avoid the topic of growth out of a lack of know-how. If they advocate for you to get support, that’s a good sign.
Align with what they care about.
Perhaps your manager isn’t prioritizing your growth because they're focused on something else. Get curious about that something else, and align your efforts with it, so that you’re helping tackle their biggest challenges.
Share a happy file.
Own the narrative by creating a happy file (or brag sheet) with your accomplishments, feedback from the team, clients, or partners, and any other tidbits. Save screenshots, type anecdotes, and capture any project context + data, so the depth is retained. I promise that managers will look at this for reviews and compensation + promotion discussions.
Eat the frog.
Don’t avoid the topic of your growth. Tackle it first in your 1:1 and set the stage by sending an agenda with it listed as the first bullet point.
Assume your manager wants you to grow, and then make their role as easy as possible to advocate for you. Occasionally you'll see a manager who’s threatened by ambition, but most want a thriving team—it makes them look good.
Your manager is distant and unavailable.
My first few managers fell into this camp, so I created a loose rotation (below) to ensure I got the most out of the ~30 minutes I got with them each month.
Bring solutions.
A manager that’s unavailable doesn’t necessarily have time to spot and solve problems. If you do that, you’re making their life easier creating a halo effect. Come to those 1:1s with—the problem, why it matters, what you’ve learned about it, and 1-3 ideas for solving it. The goal is to get their buy-in to solve said problem.
Get input on decisions.
For things that are not in your realm of ownership to decide upon. Use the 1:1 to get input, feedback, and decisions. Sometimes, I had to use a few 1:1s to take a decision from proposal, to feedback, to approval.
Close the loop.
Ensure your manager knows that the solution they approved has made it into the world. Share how this work (or your team’s work) is being received and ask if your manager has anything to add.
Weave in growth.
Come up with 1-3 lines about what you want in your career and keep repeating them. Even though I had a distant manager in my twenties, she knew I wanted to create a culture function, so the minute that got traction with her executive peers, she put my name forth.
Bonus Points—Show expertise.
Bring interesting news, developments, updates in your field to your manager. I used to write half-page briefs for my manager about the latest and greatest in People/HR, which made her look good in executive meetings and led to me being her obvious successor. Some of my brief ideas came from just asking her what she was thinking about.
The most important rule of thumb—don’t use a distant manager for complaining, venting, or therapy. Talk to your friends or peers. Whether it’s fair or not, a distant manager will only have a sliver of info on you; let it be that you’re a go-getter.
Your manager makes the 1:1 about them.
The good news is that you can learn a lot about a person by what they focus on in a 1:1, but the bad news is that the 1:1 isn’t about you.
Most founders and executives I’ve reported to fall into this camp, either they are prattling on about themselves or calculating how quickly they can end the conversation for their “busy” day.
My goal was to align on what they care about, so, I would just get curious about their challenges and feelings. Sometimes executives don’t have anyone checking in on them, and they inadvertently dump on one or all of their direct reports.
You still need to find a way to advocate for your growth, but the tangible bits (e.g., comp, title) often come from just being someone that your manager trusts.
You don’t have 1:1s with your manager at all.
Keep them updated anyways. Use email to follow a similar loop of problem identification → solving → feedback → advocating for your growth.
I always did a quarterly email recap to my manager of wins, challenges, learnings, and what’s next. It was a succinct way for them to have my narrative.
For you, do a ritual retrospective. Every week or so pause to ask yourself: How did the week go? What did I work on? Anything to celebrate? Feedback I got or need to give?
Over time this will build your internal metronome for what success looks like. (This also helps if you have a manager obfuscating reality out of fear or competition.)
These tips don’t necessarily reflect a fair world, or how I think things should work. But they are tips that have worked for myself and my coaching clients.
Questions to get you started.
I recommend having a living doc between individual and manager of topics and discussion recaps. It's nice to have everything in one place, resolve some items in the comments, and as a manager—get clarity on anything awaiting my decision or feedback. Use whatever tool. Don’t overthink this.
Before any 1:1 ask yourself—What is the most important thing I need to convey? Then do that.
When in doubt, try the Rose, Thorn, Bud formula. Name something positive since the last 1:1, a challenge that’s keeping you up at night, and a suggestion you’ve been holding onto? Or pull ideas from our lists below.
10 Questions to Ask Your Team
How do you define “a good week” on this team? What would you keep exactly as is if you could? (Ask about the opposite too!)
Reflecting on X project, what would you do differently next time?
When was the last time you gushed about and felt proud of your work?
Is there anyone (you included) that hasn’t gotten the recognition they deserve?
Has anything been promised or agreed on that hasn’t been delivered?
What's one thing I could do to make you feel more supported?
When does your work feel draining, boring, or mismatched?
Can you share a time when you felt safe—or unsafe—to speak up?
What’s the best career compliment you’ve received?
Do you feel included in decisions that impact you directly?
10 Questions to Ask Your Manager
What’s keeping you up right now?
What could hold our team back from success?
What’s the biggest skills gap you see on our team now?
What does great performance look like in your eyes?
What does success for my role look like to you?
What would hold you back from recommending me for a raise or promotion during the next cycle?
What do you hear about my performance from other people?
How do you view our team’s role in the business today?
Where do you think our team adds the most (and least) value?
What’s the biggest bottleneck for the team/company?
I like to be open-hearted with my questions to my team and disarming with my manager. My goal is to be inquisitive, not defensive, and ready to help.
EverMore has a question of the day which builds inner knowledge, but can also give you ideas for things to ask your team or bring up to your manager.
Final Thoughts
This piece focused on the 1:1 between an individual and their manager, but there’s also benefit in checking in with your peers and indirect manager/reports.
When we avoid hard conversations, we’re fostering artificial harmony. No one grows from that performance.
xoxo,
Courtney @ EverMore
Courtney Branson is the cofounder of EverMore, the career companion. She's a former Chief People Officer and future of work essayist. You can find her on LinkedIn, Instagram, and as the cohost of the Dear Evermore podcast.
